


Cut Out the Middle Man

by dedougal



Category: Teen Wolf (TV) RPF
Genre: M/M, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-14
Updated: 2012-11-14
Packaged: 2017-11-18 16:28:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/563054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dedougal/pseuds/dedougal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's hard, sometimes, to shake off the day job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cut Out the Middle Man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dazedrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dazedrose/gifts).



> HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAZEDROSE! Just knowing you brings a little sunshine into my life. *hugs and kisses* (it's your birthday, I'm allowed to be sappy)
> 
> And disclaimer: none of this is real.

When he snapped at Posey, Tyler wondered what happened to him. He apologised straight away, of course, but the incident rankled. Posey was just being Posey, a little stoned, a little high on finishing an episode. There had been no reason for Tyler to yell. Not really.

But he had. He’d growled, almost. That was the first sign of a problem.

He didn’t like shaving. His stubble grew so quickly that it made a mockery of it. His stubble was less designer and more just there. He liked to let it grow, developing a beard between Friday and Monday more often than not. That was normal, fine. The weekend scruff. He liked the way it felt, now, unlike in the past when he’d stripped it off. And there was the whole fact he’d actually dragged out the leather jacket from the back of his closet and considered it for all of a minute before shrugging on a blazer and walking away.

It was only when they were on a red carpet and the interviewing asked Dylan about character bleed that Tyler realised what was going on. He felt like such an idiot.

 

“So how do you deal with character bleed?” Dylan was fiddling with his phone and looked distracted enough that Tyler thought he could slip the question in casually.

Dylan looked over at him rather too perceptively though. “I don’t have that problem. Or, well, Stiles is kinda me, unleashed. You are nothing like Derek, though.” Dylan circled his hand in front of his mouth. “Your smile is lovely not, like, ‘mmmm going to eat you’ like Derek.”

Tyler leaned back. “My smile is…?”

“Stop fishing for compliments, fuzz face.” Dylan kicked at the chair and he smiled, a little, before returning to his tapping.

 

They were young, they were hot and a lot of people liked to invite them to parties. It was damn good. He got to hang out with his friends and get drunk and have lots of people tell him they loved him. It did the ego and the heart a whole lot of good. Now Dylan was twenty one, he was making up for the days of sneaking drinks from his friends by being the life and soul of everything. It was worth the months in Atlanta.

No one owned up to whose idea the body shots were but Dylan sprawled over a long table, t-shirt tangled up around his armpits and jeans tugged down low to bare his stomach, made Tyler want to simultaneously want to yell at everyone and tell them how awesome Dylan was and hide him away. Nobody should be seeing Dylan like this, loose and drunk and everyone’s friend. No one else should be tracing the path his moles made over his torso with their eyes (and only their eyes). Tyler was inordinately fond of this version of Dylan, to be truthful, enjoyed how pliable and cuddly and how he would fall asleep sprawled in the most unlikely of positions, preferably over someone else.

Tyler had another moment of uncomfortable realisation about character bleed. Possessiveness. That hadn’t really been a huge part of his personality until Derek Fucking Hale had showed up. But here he was feeling possessive over one of his cast mates. His friend. His really good friend.

“Who’s first?” Holland was entirely too into this as well, eyes gleaming as she scanned the crowd. “C’mon, Hoechlin!” 

Wait? What? But the crowd was lifting him up and pushing him forward and then he was pressed up against the table Dylan was on by the crowd. Dylan met his eyes and grinned lazily – he was obviously a whole lot more drunk than Tyler and possibly moving rapidly into bad decision making territory. That thought unsettled Tyler, set something churning low in his belly. Dylan’s hand held an unsteady shot glass positioned over his navel and Tyler suddenly focused on the tiny droplets of golden liquor making their way over the smooth skin to either side.

Dylan wasn’t the only one in questionable decision making time, as Tyler dipped to run his tongue up the path the droplet had left, tasting raw alcohol and salt and Dylan. His nose brushed the soft hair trailing down to the too low pants before he closed his lips around the rim of the glass and pushed up, taking the glass with him and swallowing the shot. Tequila. Really cheap ass tequila that burned. He coughed in reaction as he grabbed the glass and wiped at his eyes.

When his vision cleared enough, he looked down to see Dylan watching him. “You okay, man?”

“You shouldn’t be doing this.” The words were out before Tyler could stop them. Then he was tugging Dylan’s t-shirt down and lifting him up off the table. “Let’s go home.”

 

Dylan was the same drunk he’d remembered, plastered all along Tyler’s side as he flagged down a cab. “Isn’t home,” Dylan muttered, indistinctly, nose pressed into Tyler’s arm. Tyler didn’t want to touch that one with a bargepole. The cab was warm and he could feel the booze making him sleepy but Tyler pinched his thigh to stay awake and watch as Dylan cuddled in and fell asleep, mouth wide open. A devilish part of Tyler almost wanted to put things in it and take pictures. Like his fingers. He was skirting a thumb around the plush swell of Dylan’s lower lip when the cab drew up outside his condo.

 

After a workout and a long, long shower and a thorough caffeination routine, Tyler was ready to face the new day. On the other hand, Dylan was not happy when the sun shone through the drapes. Tyler had listened to him bullshit about his metabolism and the fact he didn’t get hangovers or anything all too often to not enjoy this. “That was beer, before. This was the hard stuff.”

Dylan flipped up his middle finger before burying his head under the pillow in Tyler’s guest bedroom. “I didn’t do anything stupid, though? Right?”

“You were up for body shots.” Tyler reckoned there might have been cameras so he thought he better be honest. The anguished groan from the pillow sparked his conscience a little. Then the pillow shifted and Dylan’s head popped out, cheeks marked by creases and eyes less than half open.

“ _You_ did one. You were basically growling _and_ you licked me.” Dylan was now sitting up in his nest of comforter, looking much sharper by the moment. “It was like you wanted to pin me up against the wall and threaten me or something. Total Derek shit.”

Tyler wasn’t quite sure how to answer that accusation. He shrugged, half-heartedly. “Coffee?”

“You’re not… Tyler?” Dylan’s voice was softer and younger all of a sudden, uncertain in a way that Tyler hadn’t heard for a while. It made him scrub his hands over his face and sit down on the edge of the bed.

“Sometimes it’s- It’s stupid.” Tyler started when he realised Dylan had crawled closer, had a hand out. “It’s nothing.” He grinned but he knew that he didn’t mean it and, even more, Dylan knew he didn’t mean it. 

“Hey, I like it. You’re badass, you growl and apparently you like being possessive about me. If you had to have Derek Hale Character Bleed, at least you chose that and not the eating helpless bunnies thing. Derek’s allergy to shirts might also be…” Dylan waggled his eyebrows suggestively and Tyler couldn’t help but let out a snort.

“You know werewolves don’t exist, right?” He was – mostly – joking. Dylan battered at him. “I am, you know. Possessive of you. I don’t like to see you being all drunk and taken advantage of.”

“I think you were the only one who took advantage of me with the nosing and the licking.” Dylan shrugged his shoulder against Tyler’s and it seemed entirely natural for him to turn and cup Dylan’s cheek and kiss him, briefly, on the lips. Dylan tasted of sour alcohol and sleep and it wasn’t the most pleasant kiss and then Tyler’s brain caught up with him. He’d kissed Dylan. His friend. His colleague.

Dylan looked at him with those Bambi-like enormous eyes before he pulled away, slowly. He scrambled off the bed but when Tyler made a move to follow Dylan waved him down. “I’m just- Okay. What I’m going to do is brush my teeth and we’re going to try that again and we’re going to enjoy that and then you’re going to tell me that it’s not just character bleed and you starting to believe in Sterek or some shit. Then we’re going to do that – kiss – again.” Dylan stumbled out of the room and Tyler heard the bathroom door shut.

He was halfway through straightening out the comforter before the full impact of what Dylan had said really sunk in. He smoothed a hand over the comforter that was still vaguely warm from Dylan’s body heat. The thought of that heat pressed against him, tasting it, something less drunk and snatched and more planned and thought about and real. Dylan tumbled him down into the freshly made bed when he came back a moment later, laughing and kissing and tugging at thin t-shirts and it was like a weight lifting, the sun shining through a cloudbank.

“That’s better,” Dylan said, kneeling over Tyler and brushing a hand over his hair before dropping lower to rub his nose against Tyler’s, just for a moment. It tickled. 

“What?” Tyler grabbed up and caught Dylan, pulling him into a kiss he couldn’t help smiling through, like he was never going to stop smiling, mouth permanently fixed in a ridiculous sappy grin. 

“You’re smiling like you again,” Dylan said, pressing another kiss in before Tyler could reply. Also like he never wanted to stop kissing. Tyler was pretty okay with that.


End file.
